DARK – Second Week of December (Part Two)

Two tall (pillar) and three short (votive) candles, that have been burning, for some time, in a dark place. – Photo is public domain courtesy of wiki free images.

Today, I’m puttering. Writing solstice cards. Washing dishes. Tidying a week’s work of messy house. My annual Solstice party is only a little more than a week away.
How do you hold space for people’s sadness?
How do you offer hope or comfort to people without asking them to pretend that their pain is “all better now”?
Things to think about while I poke and prod at this midwinter tarot journey I’m taking.

Justice
This is the card that sometimes switches places with Strength, and the two are linked. Personal power. Social power. Relational power. If Strength is a call to practice compassion and patience, Justice is a call to not let “compassion and patience” turn into letting yourself (or someone else, for that matter) off the hook too easily. Cristy C Road describes Justice as accountability. It’s taking responsibility for your actions, trying to do what’s right (and fucking up, and recognizing that, and making amends, and trying again, and then trying again, again… Which is another way of phrasing Strength’s own call to not give up, and to be vulnerable – instead of defensive and walled off – in your learning process).
It’s asking “How can I pass the mic?” instead of assuming that people I haven’t heard from as much “have no voices” and need to be spoken for. It’s asking “What action will result the least harm?” when I need to decide what to do. It’s also – and I’m probably thinking of this because I’ve been reading Care Work – recognizing when it’s appropriate to offer solutions (possibly by actually asking if that’s what someone wants) versus when it’s better to “pass the mic” in a different way, and just give someone the space talk about their experiences and problems to a supportive listener.

The Hanged Man
I love the million different ways this card gets renamed. Intermission. The Mirror. New Vision. Suspension. The Precipice. A whole bunch of different ways to talk about taking (or needing) a moment to pause, to get a different perspective on things, to lean into uncertainty and the discomfort that can come with that. A chance for the us, as the fool on the journey, to learn something new by listening to something different, to sacrifice some comfort in order to push through and level up.
I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate sacrificing comfort. I can even pretend to be otherwise on that one. Plus I’m also a “fixer”. Meaning: I’ve spent an absurd number of decades acutely believing that it’s my job to FIX other people’s feelings, and that if I fail to do so – if I fail to take on other people’s feelings as my responsibility – I am failing as a daughter or a friend or a partner. Which is really a way of saying I have super crappy boundaries around other people’s feelings and, while I’m a hell of a lot better about this than I was, say, ten years ago? It’s still Very Uncomfortable to just… sit with someone else’s depression, or their body-pain-related short-temperedness, or what-have-you, and just… not take it personally. Not freak out that it’s All My Fault that someone else’s brain chemistry is kicking their ass right now. Not get resentful when someone else “gets to be” impatient and antisocial when their joints are killing them or their fibro is flaring, while I “have to be” (ha… I don’t always manage this, mind you) nice, patient, and friendly when my quads are having spasms or my sciatic nerve is screaming at me or my hip is swollen to twice its normal size.How do you put someone else first without feeling like a (resentful) martyr? How do you and yours find ways to take care of each other as your respective capacities allow?

Death
Being a card of transition and renewal, this is a very appropriate card for Midwinter. A card about tying up loose ends. About occupying liminal space. If the Hanged Man is dangling on the edge of change, then Death is that change. Death is the Going-Through, ideally with the arms of your people around you.What skin do you need to shed this go-round? What uncomfortable thing do you have to feel your way through in order to shift (Death is suuuuuuuch a Scorpio card) into your next shape, next form, next iteration that gets you closer to your deepest, truest self? What does Shadow have to say, if you offer it your ears?

Temperance
It’s… funny? Death and Temperance are both, on one levels, about burning away the excess stuff. Decluttering your life, your process; sloughing off the business that is meant to be a distraction. Temperance is Ms Sugar’s Black Swan, the balance between your “easy-to-like” side and the parts of you that you might be ashamed of, or afraid of, or want to hide away.
Ruth West renamed Temperance as “Grace”, and Oliver Pickle (in their re-interpretation of West’s Thea’s Tarot deck) refers to her version of this card as a “holistic nurturer, healer, [and] supporter”. It’s a card that calls us to join forces with others and co-operate, and to work through things with care rather than haste. Both of-which relate a lot to the idea of holding space for each other where we’re at, and building networks of mutual care.Where am I taking too much on? Where am I slacking off? How do I balance taking care of myself with taking care of the people to-whom I have responsibilities and commitments?
If you’re supporting somebody through hard stuff, do you have somebody who can support you?
I find I do this a fair bit – be the “dump out” person for someone who is doing a lot of “comfort in” for somebody else. But I also have people who do it for, who are willing to sit with me and my frustration and resentment so that I don’t vomit it all over the people in my life who need me to step up and help with a thing.
It’s a card of “putting your own oxygen mask on first”. Of “the revolution will be sustainable”.
How do you make it sustainable?